Beyond MQLs: Reframing success in B2B marketing
The rules of B2B sales and marketing are being rewritten.
After decades of focusing on marketing qualified leads (MQLs), pipeline reports, and traditional success metrics, organizations find themselves navigating a changed environment: complex buying groups that spend just 17% of their time engaging with vendors, and make 69% of their journey before any sales contact.
The data tells a clear story. By the time a potential customer makes contact, they have researched solutions, formed opinions, and often created vendor shortlists—all before a single sales conversation. But here's the crucial insight: 84% of buyers purchase from the first vendor they engage.
That makes being timely and relevant in your outreach—across the buying journey—a business necessity.
This statistic should catch every marketing leader's attention. It represents the difference between shaping the buying journey and arriving after key decisions have already been made. But achieving early engagement at scale requires a major shift in how marketing teams operate. The traditional approach of casting wide nets and qualifying leads through generic scoring models no longer drives optimal results in today's environment.
Our research, drawing from in-depth interviews with 17 senior marketing leaders across major B2B organisations, reveals a clear message—marketing's role in revenue generation has evolved dramatically. These leaders, managing everything from global enterprise marketing to targeted regional teams, share a common perspective: traditional marketing approaches must change to match today's complex buying behaviors.
Marketing teams using AI-driven insights are developing more advanced approaches to identify and engage prospects earlier in their journey.
And while buyers often complete most of their journey before reaching out, successful organizations are finding ways to become visible and valuable during this crucial research phase. Winning in this environment takes more than lead volume—it requires precision, relevance, and a more sophisticated approach to driving revenue growth.
Key challenges emerging from our research include:
Identifying and engaging prospects during their early, anonymous research phase
Adapting to buying groups of 10-13 stakeholders with diverse priorities
Moving beyond basic lead scoring to predictive account intelligence
Delivering personalization at scale across multiple decision-makers
Using AI and intent data effectively
Providing content that resonates with specific stakeholders
Establishing true revenue-focused alignment across the organization
This Market View publication brings together insights from marketing leaders representing some of the world's most effective B2B organizations. Their experiences, combined with our survey data, provide a roadmap for changing marketing from a lead generation function to a strategic driver of revenue growth through every stage of the modern buying journey.
As you explore how to enhance your marketing approach, we hope these insights provide both validation and fresh perspectives on achieving success in today's complex B2B market.
About 6sense
6sense is on a mission to revolutionise the way B2B organisations create revenue by predicting customers most likely to buy and recommending the best course of action to engage anonymous buying teams. 6sense Revenue AI is the only sales and marketing platform to unlock the ability to create, manage and convert high-quality pipeline to revenue. Customers report 2X increases in average contract value, 4X increases in win rate and 20-40% reduction in time to close deals. Know everything, do anything, with 6sense.